It was my turn to pick up the tab, the choice of location had been Raymond’s. In a friendship that went back to third grade and which was ruled by many traditions, this tradition – one person selects a restaurant for a Friday lunch, the other is responsible for the check – goes back to the day I left my wallet on the kitchen table and Ray covered a sizable bill. Something he did, I should add, without complaint and a graciousness that speaks well of my best friend.
Once we got over the ensuing contests of sticking-your-buddy-with-a-check-the-size-of-a-mortgage-payment, we selected places like Frank Pepe’s on Wooster St., just as Ray did for our most recent repast.
Pepe’s was actually a concession to me. I knew that Ray actually preferred Sally’s down the street… Sally’s being New Haven’s other “high temple” to Neapolitan apizza. Call it a New Haven “thing”… local folks have been arguing about it for decades… which pizza reigns supreme on the street… Frank Pepe’s established in 1925, or Sally’s founded by Pepe’s cousin Philomena Consiglio in 1938 and named after her eldest son Sal.
Our large mushroom, sausage and bacon arrived at the table, steam rising from its blistered black edges. We both knew to let the pizza rest for a few moments to “compose itself.”
I surveyed our fare, “you know… my Aunt Meggie was right! I mean… she was right about a lot of stuff… but about this? *whew*…”
Ray lifted an eyebrow.
I pointed to our pie. “She’d see a squirrel or a skunk squished on the road – killed and flattened out after repeated run-overs, and she’d call out ‘road pizza!’”
“Oh, that’s pleasant.”
“No, no… look. Look at the darkened mushroom slices, the crumbled sausage meat, mini strips of bacon burnt and curled… it does look like a squirrel, or two squirrels that have been hit a dozen times. The only thing missing is maybe a little fur… which I am sure we could have added as a fourth topping.”
“You couldn’t wait to share this on a different afternoon? An afternoon when, perhaps, we weren’t having lunch? Besides, no one has a fourth topping unless you’re a Wolfgang Puck wannabe.”
Perhaps the observation was ill-timed. Still I couldn’t help but smile. Thinking of Meggie always makes me smile. She was not the author of the term road pizza. That honor belonged to my Uncle Saul… or so I was told. Meggie just took to the concept the way a bear takes to shitting in the woods, and used it in conversation at every opportunity. If my Mother, Meggie and I drove to the Crown Market on Whalley Avenue and if we saw something on Fountain St. that had previously been a bushy tailed grey squirrel, Meggie would point and say, “road pizza!” One time we saw the carcass of a deer on the road side near the Maltby Reservoir, Meggie couldn’t contain her excitement, “That’s one for the humans!”
We were nearly ready to tuck into one of Pepe’s finest. I poured us each some birch beer. “It was her dark side.”
“Dark side? Your Aunt? Anyone who could make oatmeal raisin cookies like your Aunt couldn’t have a dark side.”
I considered the remark, and regarded my generous slice, which to my eye looked very much like “road kill” minus the fur. Somehow Maggie’s glee at pointing out various animal bodies that littered the road just didn’t square with the person who detested any form of violence. And while she held nothing against squirrels, opossums, raccoons and skunks… the same can not be said for deer. Against deer she waged a private vendetta.
Maybe it was a product of living up in more rural Woodbury and having to share her gardens with countless deer that got it her ticked. But the more likely explanation is her frequent automobile to deer confrontations on the lanes of Woodbury, Southbury and Newtown. Two short anecdotes.
After her second encounter with “Bambi” that had left the front end of her Volvo looking like she had been hit by a T-34 Tank, we watched as Uncle Saul put two deer decals under the side window on the driver’s side. Meggie gritted her teeth, “I hate ’em all! They’re too many of them… it’s us against them.”
We stood on the driveway looking at each other. No one knew what to say. Things were kind of quiet for a moment. Meggie waited for someone to make a mitigating comment of some sort, like… “Oh, they are so cute.” Or, “Come on Meggie, they are harmless.”
The latter observation would be met with a glare, “Harmless? Harmless did you say? The problem is that they have no natural enemies. We should re-introduce mountain lions to Litchfield. That would help keep the deer population in check. Maybe that’s too extreme? OK, this is better: I think we should pass a law that every adult in Woodbury should have a quota of 20 deer that they would be obligated to kill each year. Give everyone a gun, and they would be required to kill 20 deer a year, or they would have to sell their homes and move to another town. No, make that a State. Everyone has to do their part.”
Uncle Saul was quick to point out, “No natural enemies? What about you?”
Honestly, I didn’t know what to make of it. I was just a kid. I loved everything about Meggie except that she taught 8th Grade Science… and now there was all this rough talk about deer. I may have asked my Mother why Meggie didn’t move further south if she was so angry about deer. We had no deer in New Haven on Alston Avenue.
Another time… it was Meggie’s Birthday and we went up to Woodbury for dinner and cake. Uncle Saul presented Meggie with two nicely wrapped gift boxes. The first had a clay coloured Willis and Geiger safari cotton bush jacket, and the other box had a pith helmet. The gift card was inscribed, “To my favorite great white huntress, with all my love… Bwana Saul.”
Dinner and cake were the best… the stories went on and on. After we said goodnight, Meggie waved to us from the front porch. She looked about the area. Was she looking for her next mark? Before we got into our car, my Father pointed to Meggie’s Volvo… there were three more deer decals under her window. It certainly looked like Meggie was intent on doing her part.
I never asked anyone whether Meggie actually patrolled the roads of Litchfield County looking to nail deer. The thought seemed outrageous. Or was it? Maybe she was just the victim of amazing coincidences. One time her Volvo (this would have been her third one that I knew of) was totaled in a deer collision, and she hurt her neck and had to go to a chiropractor for months. If someone asked her how she was feeling, she would shoot back, “Better than the son-of-a-bitch deer!”
Years later, on one of my visits to her home in Chatham, I though about bringing up the subject of her obsession with deer. We were sitting in the den which was chock full of bric brac and mementos. Included in the decor was an original Sharp’s buffalo rifle which occupied the prestigious wall space behind the couch. In spite of her threat to arm the citizenry of Woodbury with guns to meet the deer challenge, she actually didn’t approve of guns. But the Sharp’s was a piece of history. Anyway, I guess it would have been too hard for her to mount the Volvo on the wall.
No… there would be no point in asking about whether some of those decals were the result of intentional muggings. I liked not knowing. I was supremely happy to think that there was a rogue element to Meggie. A dark side. To me, it added to Meggie’s character. Not that she was without dimension. I think of it as one more facet to her incredible personality… even if seems out of character to the casual observer.
I looked at my slice… very happy. I raised my birch beer in toast, “This is for the humans!”
Ray nodded, raised his glass and proceeded to scarf down slice #1. “Good choice, Jim.”
“Yeah… next time we’ll swap out the bacon for some venison.”
“I don’t think Pepe’s offers it as a topping.”
“Then we’ll just have to bring our own. I hear that the deer are running on the Merritt.”